Challenges to overcome
Building enough support and momentum
Sustainable development is a cross-cutting issue and therefore coordination can be challenging. Often, strategic approaches to embedding sustainability in an organisation are driven by an environmental team or department. While this might be appropriate depending on the nature of the issues confronted by the organisation, it might limit the extent of influence across the organsation. It will therefore usually be helpful to establish a sustainability network supported by a core team.
Separation of corporate and sustainabilty strategies
Even where commitment exists at the highest level to embed sustainability into an organisation and where there is a coordinating body in place to manage the process, blockages may occur where corporate and sustainability strategies are not integrated. Sustainability commitments can be perceived to be bolt-ons to company policy. This can be overcome by ensuring the two align when setting the strategy, by setting targets and an action plan, and by including appropriate elements of the organisation's sustainabilty objectives in employees personal objectives to ensure they receive due consideration.
Are there key challenges in this area we haven’t discussed? If so, please tell us about them.
Do you have another example of how these challenges can be overcome? If so, please submit a case study.